to call off the wedding and marry the bastard three days later.’
The growled, hot words filled with deep censure robbed me of speech, shamed me and turned me on in equal measures.
His thumb rose from my chin, drifted at leisure over my lower lip as he continued to watch me with dark, hooded eyes. ‘You want to know if that changed things between us?’
I licked my lip again, my heart pounding with apprehension and a whole load of sizzling lust. ‘Did it?’
His hand dropped like a stone and he surged to his feet. ‘What the hell does it matter?’ he asked.
‘How can you ask me that? You know why it matters. You never answered my phone calls after that and I haven’t seen you for years! It’s not like you not to call me out if you think I’ve done something wrong.’
His eyebrows shot up. ‘If?’
‘Fine, when. Whatever.’
He spiked his fingers through his hair. Then he threw me another of those indifferent shrugs that seemed to find the centre of my hurt with bullseye accuracy. ‘I was busy. So were you. We were both busy empire-building, if I’m not mistaken.’
I scrambled to my feet too. ‘Don’t give me that. We were never too busy for each other before…before…’
‘Stop clinging to this idealistic version of what you thought we were or would be. You want the truth? I stopped trusting you after you stopped trusting yourself. After you went against your every instinct and married that bastard.’
Hurt lanced deeper through me. ‘How dare you?’
‘Oh, come off it. I know you. Sometimes maybe more than you know yourself. You think I didn’t see the doubt on your face when I walked into that church as you promised to honour and cherish? Not so deep down, you knew he was wrong for you, that you were making a mistake. And you married him anyway.’
‘So you chose to punish me for it?’
He exhaled harshly. ‘Damn it, I don’t have time for this.’
‘Really, then I ask you again, why did you invite me here? I may be stubborn but I don’t trespass where I’m not wanted. If you don’t have time for me or our friendship, then why did you agree to see me? You could’ve done what you did before and ignored my email, continued your grand empire-building. So why didn’t you?’
He stilled as if my words had turned him to stone. For the longest moment, we stared at each other across the living room. Then, driven by that same instinct that had started this reckless path of discovery, I slowly made my way towards him, aware of every cell in my body, every stretch of heated skin as I’d never been before. Also aware of his intense scrutiny as his gaze raked me from head to toe and back again.
I was treading dangerous, familiar waters. The same undertow that’d sucked me in that night, three days before my wedding, when I’d thrown caution to the wind and ended up almost drowning. This thing could blow wide open, be irreparably damaged.
But then…wasn’t Bryce already claiming we were beyond repair? That in not heeding his warning and marrying Dan I’d broken our friendship? For all I knew if I walked out of this apartment I wouldn’t see him again for another three years. Or ever.
So what the hell did I have to lose? A friendship I’d treasured while wanting more, only for it to fall apart anyway?
I stopped a mere foot from him. The intensity of the emotions vibrating from him wrapped around me but I didn’t let it deter me. I’d come through a very bitter divorce with a stronger spine and steely resolve never to doubt myself again. And now he was in front of me, six feet three inches of raw masculinity and long-denied secret craving.
A craving I’d received a quick, highly addictive but maddeningly brief taste of.
‘Why did you change the venue for this meeting? Didn’t you originally ask me to come to your office?’ I modulated my voice to that tenor he’d confessed minutes ago turned him on.
As if on cue, his eyes darkened, his jaw clenching as he struggled to remain unaffected. When he swayed just that tiniest fraction towards me, I knew I had him.
For how long remained a mystery, but right now, in this moment, he was mine. And I wasn’t about to lose my chance.
‘Is it because you wanted something else besides telling me everything you think I’ve done wrong?’ I didn’t give him a chance to reply.
A simple step and I closed the gap between us. A slow tilt onto the balls of my feet and I was sliding my palms over his rock-hard abs and up his chest. I registered the fierce pounding of his heart echoing mine. Felt and revelled in it.
‘Was it because you wanted another taste of me, perhaps?’ I whispered on a soft breath right before I let my lips brush the skin beneath his earlobe.
A deep shudder powered through him. ‘What the hell are you doing, rosebud?’ he rasped.
‘Dare,’ I breathed.
‘You’re still playing the game wrong.’ His voice was a night-dark rumble, his hands clenching and unclenching at his sides as if he was stopping himself from reaching for me. That glimpse of power over him spurred me on.
‘Am I? Then I guess you don’t want to hear my dare?’
I dropped my head a fraction to lick at the frantic pulse beating at his throat. His next breath hissed out. ‘Just fucking say it already.’
‘I dare you to do it again. I dare you to drag me to that sofa and use your tongue and your mouth and your hands on me. Just like you did last time. See if you can work some of this…angst out of your system.’
A pure, animalistic groan rumbled from his chest. ‘And what makes you think I’ll stop at just tasting you? That I won’t demand a hell of a lot more?’
My answer emerged with more than a vein of anguish. ‘You say you don’t trust me. Well, I don’t trust you not to abandon me after this lunch either. But I know you enough to know you’ll stop when I say. And I’m telling you I’ll let you…process your charged state if that’s what you want too.’
His hands found my hips then, roughly tugging me back from my whisper-light exploration of his throat, to stare deep into my eyes. ‘You think you still know me that well?’ he asked darkly.
Maybe not, but some things never changed and Bryce had more integrity in his little finger than most men did in their whole life. ‘Guess we’ll find out. Unless you’re too scared to take the dare?’
The words were barely out of my mouth before he was plucking me off my feet, the rugby-honed body he’d achieved in his time at Cambridge making light of my considerable weight. Bryce was the first and last man who’d been able to carry me without making me self-conscious about the extra pounds I carried. And while I’d shed a good few pounds during and after my divorce, I’d never quite achieved that golden figure of perfection in my head. And lately, I’d tried to be okay with that. It was, after all, what had earned me a dream career and sustained my growing empire.
But I still had moments of anxiety, moments when the mocking taunts and
